AbbotobottobottoBATMAN! Pakistans newest take on Six Flags.
Abbotabad. Land of Pakistanis premier military academy, headquarters of the military’s medical corps, home to the compound where Osama Bin Laden was killed. And soon enough it’ll also be one of the premier amusement park destinations in Pakistan! The timing of the development is interesting, coming a little more than 18 months after Bin Laden’s death, and nearly exactly a year after the Bin Laden compound was demolished. Along with their announcement of plans to begin construction on the park, officials also issued vehement denials that it had anything to do with Bin Laden. Numerous officials were quoted stating the simple and blunt line: “This project has nothing to do with Osama bin Laden.”1 While this is obviously the “ethically proper” and “politically correct” line to go with, it begs the question of whether or not officials are passing...
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Hungry for a Story: the Hunger Games
The release of the first movie in the Hunger Games trilogy made a huge splash on the big screens. After its first weekend, Hunger Games had the third best opening of all time only behind Harry Potter: the Deathly Hallows Part II and The Dark Knight. The film adaptation stars twenty-year old Jennifer Lawrence, an Oscar nominee. The three part book series, written by Suzanne Collins, is a story of a girl, Katniss Everdeen, as she volunteers to take her sister’s place in a life and death reality show in a futuristic world. Although it has been compared to Twilight, the Hunger Games tells more than just the story of a love struck girl dealing with a plethora of teenage emotions. In fact, multiple ways of analyzing the film have come to fruition. First, Katniss’s story is a parallel...
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Petro-patronage: How the Middle East is Buying Its Way to the Top
Class has just ended at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Several students stroll out of their lecture hall, chatting in Arabic. They walk down a block of gleaming, white, futuristic buildings and meet up with friends who go to Cornell, University College, and HEC. The students discuss their classes and the recent Champions League matches while having a picnic lunch under a grove of palm trees. This could be happening right now at Education City in Doha, Qatar, where the oil-funded Qatar Foundation has assembled a formidable collection of branches of top Western universities. Over the past few years, the small states of the Persian Gulf, in particular Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have been using their money to buy their way onto the world stage. Unlike previous rising powers who sought military or economic muscle, these...
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Music in the Middle East: How Hip Hop Affected the Arab Spring
“I heard them say/the revolution won’t be televised/Al Jazeera proved them wrong/Twitter has him paralyzed/80 million strong” – Omar “Offendum” Chakaki, #Jan25 Of the many factors that make up the impressive impact of the Arab Spring, the strategic use of media might be what best motivates those who wish for revolution and for definitive change in their lives. More specifically, the youth of the Middle East and North African regions are motivated by a musical component of their campaigns for revolution. From the adhans recited regularly in mosques to the impromptu songs of the troubadours in places such as Tahrir Square, music has both a motivational and a unifying effect on those who support the movement of the Arab Spring. In this modern age, however, there is a need for a musical genre that not only mobilizes activists for...
Read MoreChinese Poetry: New life in old classics
Li Bai (701-762 AD), widely considered the greatest of all Chinese poets, had an unfortunate end. While rafting on a serene lake in a drunken stupor, he spotted the water’s reflection of the Moon and reached out to grab it, only to topple in and drown without a soul nearby. That he died in such a lonely predicament is ironic, for Mr. Li had no shortage of friends and admirers, in either his own time or the present. His contemporaries, many of whom rank highly in the annals of Chinese literature themselves, adored him, as do the millions of Chinese who have since read and memorized his works.
Read MorePost-Mao Dreaming at Fine Arts Library
A look at the new exhibit at Fisher Fine Arts Library.
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